When comparing iTerm2 vs TextWrangler, the Slant community recommends iTerm2 for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for macOS?”iTerm2 is ranked 1st while TextWrangler is ranked 58th. The most important reason people chose iTerm2 is:

iTerm has autocomplete features built in. It remembers your past commands and when you are writing something on the terminal, simply pressing `Control-;` it will show you a drop down menu of suggestions from which to choose.

Pros

Pro

Autocomplete is built-in

iTerm has autocomplete features built in. It remembers your past commands and when you are writing something on the terminal, simply pressing Control-; it will show you a drop down menu of suggestions from which to choose.

Pro

Extremely customizable

Other than being able to customize the various shortcuts, iTerm2 also lets you customize the colorscheme, font, transparency, etc.

Pro

Complete out of the box

Unlike most terminal emulators, iTerm2 comes with a pretty complete set of features. It has built-in search, autocompletion, tabbed navigation, Growl support and even a built-in clipboard manager for various API keys and such.

Pro

Fine tuning for fonts

It's possible to choose a font and adjust vertical and horizontal spacing.

Pro

Can immediately open files inside a text editor

You can Ctrl+Click on a file path to open said file in a text editor.

Pro

Supports mouse actions

Has support for mouse actions like clicking, dragging, selecting, etc.

Pro

Active maintainers

Issues resolved fast by quality contributors.

Pro

Works well with powerline fonts

Pro

Split panes

Easy to split panes to either horizontal or vertical sections. Makes it easy to observe multiple console windows.

Pro

Completely free and open source

iTerm2 is completely free and open source. It's released under the GPLv2 license.

Pro

Intuitive

Pro

Any key can be mapped to any function

Using the Preferences Menu you can set up hotkeys to map virtually any action you can think of to a single key or a combination of them. This is extremely helpful as it allows you to use shortcuts to edit commands you are typing in the terminal and while most terminal emulators have shortcuts for this sort of thing, few of them let you define your own.

Pro

Cmd+D to split plane vertically

Very handy to use multi-tab.

Pro

Can be configured as a drop-down terminal

Can be configured to work as a drop down terminal like Quake.

Pro

Works well with tmux

The great mouse and clipboard support that are built-in go really well with tmux.

Pro

Supported by many applications as a terminal app selection

If an application has terminal integration, there is high probability it allows iTerm2 to be selected.

Pro

You only need to type in commands once

iTerm2 can store up to 4M of history of commands you already used. This, coupled with the built-in search features makes it possible to type a command only once and then search for it through the history for subsequent uses.

Pro

Works perfect with Oh My Zsh

It's a perfect base to add Oh My Zsh on top of it and enjoy a lot of themes and a really pleasant look and feel.

Pro

Cmd+Shift+I to Input all

Wanna SSH your server from multiple tabs, here you go.

Pro

Fast to start up

It starts up fast because is not bloated. It has all the essentials of a text editor.

Pro

Free

Free but capable alternative to BBEdit.

Pro

Built-in FTP/STFP browser

Edit remote files easily.

Pro

Robust

Ad

Cons

Con

Not quite as fast as Alacritty or Kitty

Comparing these 3 terminals on the same machine/config, iTerm stands out as the slowest of the bunch. The difference may not be noticeable to all users.

Con

Doesn't support Snow Leopard 10.6.8

Some people still use SL.

Con

Doesn't support RTL

Con

No Longer Maintained

Bare Bones, the developers of TextWranger, recently ended maintenance and support for the product. Per the Bare Bones website (https://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/): "We have sunsetted TextWrangler, and we encourage anyone interested in TextWrangler to download and use BBEdit instead."

Con

Not Compatible with macOS High Sierra (10.13+)

Per the Bare Bones website (https://www.barebones.com/support/new-os.html): "TextWrangler is not compatible with High Sierra. We suggest that you use BBEdit as an alternative . . . ." Since Bare Bones officially sunsetted the product, it will unlikely be compatible with subsequent macOS release versions either.

Alternative Products

Each month, over 2.8 million people use Slant to find the best products and share their knowledge. Pick the tags you’re passionate about to get a personalized feed and begin contributing your knowledge.